Charles (Chuck) G. Miller / Recent Projects
Please scroll down for recent portfolio selections. Project descriptions and relevant links are in the left column. Images link to high-res versions. All material is © 2009 Charles G. Miller, for all intents and purposes. An extensive discussion of Hollywood Shower, LA Auto-Space, and several other projects can be downloaded here
La Part Maudite on 14th St. (2009)
In Collaboration with Christopher Head
The Zeckendorf Towers, or 1 Irving Place has been hailed as"One of the city's most important development projects of the 1980's [that] not only led to the renaissance of Union Square Park, but also anchored the phenomenal emergence of Park Avenue South and the Flatiron District as a chic neighborhood." (cityrealty.com)
Operating remotely (via San Diego, CA), and interpreting information from publicly available data sets, "La Part Maudite on 14th" (LPM14) is an attempt to develop a real-time visualization of waste produced and energy expended by this pivotal building. Hand-held device compatible.
An Alpha Version of the project is currently available: lpm14.org. LPM14 is presented by Art in Odd Places 2009: SIGN, an annual festival exploring the odd, ordinary and ingenious in the spectacle of daily life.
Southern California: Deus Ex Machina/Hollywood Shower (working title) 2009 - Ongoing
Hypothetical seal for the region of Southern California
Technopolitan (pre-production) (2010)
In the winter of 2010, disguised as a corporate minion, I will be producing a derive-based photographic database of the UCSD/La Jolla/UTC/North University City/Torrey Pines/Sorrento Valley technopol complex, as well as initiating a small series of interventions therein.
From Sprawltilage, 2009. A documentation of every buffer space along La Jolla Village Dr. (defining the southern border of the UCSD campus). Contribution to pros* journal
The People's Drinking Straw: A Comprehensive Guide to Southern California's Water Delivery Infrastructure (2009)
A common booster-propagandist format (the pamphlet) was utilized to aggregate multiple sources of municipal information on the water delivery infrastructure of Southern California. Disguised as a promotional tool, the pamphlet's design schema is intended evoke paradoxical nature of Southern California's culture in light of ecological locale, by underscoring the logistical difficulty, political contentiousness, and historical corruption of delivering water to this region. The pamphlet has since been distributed informally to a scatter plotting of tourist information centers in the Los Angeles basin.
Untitled (Sonic Boom / Inside Out / Who's Your Daddy?) 2 iterations: (2008, 2009)
In response to the deafening fighter jet flybys experienced several times a day on the UCSD campus. The aircraft originate 5 miles to east: from Marine Corps Air Station, Miramar.
Untitled (LA Auto-Space) (2008)
From July - September 2008, I was permitted by a handful of Los Angeles (LA) residents to accompany them during their daily transportation routines. Or, if I were able to meet and discuss with them the details of said routine, I would approximate the route by myself, using an equivalent means of transportation. The conversations and routes were video-documented; the latter was timed and mapped. For each route and conversation, I started from the original point of departure, followed the route on foot for an equivalent amount of time, then documented the closest discreet piece of architecture. The architectural and institutional significance of the original destination was virtually transposed onto the walked destination. Parallel to this process, I compiled as many interviews as I could, from urban planning academics to transportation advocates, in order to both establish a network of people and knowledge, but also to further my understanding of the structural and historical underpinnings of the development of LA, particularly at the behest of car-culture, as it emerges as the largest and most prominent example of American "sprawl". The project was exhibited at the 2008 Wight Gallery Biennial: Group Effort, from September 25, 2008 to October 9, 2008 as a three channel video installation. (Audio from channel 3 only in excerpt)
HOLLYWOOD SHOWER (2008)
A small series of videos whose production is a logistical complication layered on to mundane tasks, as a means to visualize the consumptive fallout of that which is generally taken for granted. Emphasis is also given to the landscape/context in which the production/activity exists.Other Collaborations
Recession Stories (working title) (2008-Ongoing)
In Collaboration with Muni Citrin, Andy Rice, Michaela Walsh, and Andrew Whitworth-Smith
This project is an effort to make an intervention into the dominant narratives that have become the default articulations of the causes and consequences of, as well as the tenable solutions to, the current economic malaise and its associated social consequences. These pervasive narratives left unchallenged create constraints on both discussion and action that threaten to prematurely foreclose on creative and even radical solutions.
This intervention focuses on the analyses and experiences of people in the epicenter of the crisis, Southern California. With a manic housing market, looming ecological disaster, dramatic spectrum of ideological convictions, and a legacy for setting precedents for political and cultural trends that then move east, Southern California serves as fertile terrain for assessing the broad range of social expressions that constitute the practices and ideological commitments developing from the economic crisis.
Los Laureles Canyon: Research in Action (2009)
Initiated by Keith Pezzoli and Hiram Sarabia, produced by UCSD-TV, UCSD Department of Urban Studies and Planning, and The Superfund Basic Research Program (2009)
Television documentary that profiles an eco-humanitarian crisis in the making in Los Laureles Canyon, Tijuana Mexico, part of the Bi-national Tijuana River watershed. The canyon is bisected by the U.S./Mexican border, and is home to 80,000 living in irregular and squatter settlements lacking basic water delivery and sewage infrastructure. On the U.S. side, an estuary of ecological significance is being decimated by runoff, sewage, and illegal dumping in the canyon community. I was a participant in the production and pre-production think tank, and designed the documentary’s cartographic sequences.